Win 10 End Of Life

[Ianab]

Now despite Microsoft telling us that Win 10 was the ultimate version and would get small updates for ever(*)

* for small amounts of "for ever". 

End of this year. most Win 10 PCs go "out of support". They wont stop working, just they wont get updates, even for serious security flaws. This has happened over the  years, with various version Windows, but it usually happened as hardware became unable to run modern software. 

The Win11 upgrade is a different thing. Machines that are technically able to run Win 10 are excluded from the upgrade for "security" reasons. There are ways to fudge this, and install Win 11 on older hardware.( Looks over at Lil with her 12 core Xeon PC )

Personally I'm just running Linux Mint on my PC.If you don't HAVE to run specific Windows software, it's an option.

But if you don't want to buy a new PC and need help going to FOS side, let me know.

[dgdrls]

...

Personally I'm just running Linux Mint on my PC.If you don't HAVE to run specific Windows software, it's an option.

...

I run Mint as well,  it's a dandy system, has good support and is easy on the wallet, no reason not to use it for day to day work.

In addition, A nice spreadsheet for either system, Gnumeric
http://www.gnumeric.org/

D

[Dave Shepard]

My laptop had been trying to upgrade me for a year. I refuse, now it won't work well anymore. All I do is YouTube. Not even email. 

[Plankton]

The more I hear about these forced upgrades and outmoding current computers just because the more im glad I switched to linux a long time ago.

[Ianab]

This is the sort of stuff I pick up through work. It's a generic locally assembled slimline PC. It's from 2019, so 6 years old. 8th gen I5 CPU, 8 gb RAM, 250 gb SSD. Perfectly good home PC, except it wont officially run Win11. But being generic hardware can be upgraded. Not enough to run W11, but more ram / more disk, GPU etc. I've done a couple where I've gutted the old case, and fitted it into a new tower case, bigger power supply and dedicated graphics. Sure that costs a few $$, but you end up with a pretty powerful machine, and 1/2 of it was free. 

And if you want to run Linux, it's 100% supported. 

[rusticretreater]

I mess with both but get more tired with it as I get older/more tired.  I ran Windows XP until software installs refused to support it and threw error screens.  I will do the same with Windows 10.  

I always let everyone else deal with the issues of OS upgrades and wait until there is plenty of info on the internet about all the snafu's and methods to help me out.

[Ed_K]

 So how do I upgrade to 11 or linux ???

[rusticretreater]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11

Linux is an entirely different operating system and is not for everybody.  It does require more technical knowledge to use properly.

If you have no experience with linux, it is best to get a second PC to run it so you can learn about it.

[dgdrls]

https://www.linuxmint.com/

@Ed_K 

you can make a bootable thumb drive and run Linux off of that
without messing up your Windows system.
Nice way to test and see if you like it not.

@Ianab can likely point you better than I

D

[Ianab]

First - You make a backup copy of any files you don't want to lose. Documents, photos etc. Just in case it all goes pear shaped. 

If your machine is supported to run Win 11, then there will be an option to upgrade to it in the "Updates and Security" screen. It's probably been bugging you to do it for months. I you have a relatively new machine, then that's the sensible option. 

If your machine doesn't officially support it, but you want to try anyway, the instructions are here. You get the setup file (iso) from link that Rustic posted, but you use a program called Rufus to modify the setup and write it to a thumb drive. This tells the setup program to ignore the compatibility checks, and just install anyway. Do this at your own risk, it generally works fine, but if it doesn't, MS don't want to know, and I told you so.  It generally does work, assuming the machine isn't so old it struggles with Win10, it will struggle more with 11.

https://www.xda-developers.com/install-windows-11-unsupported-pc/

Linux Mint is a version of Linux that has been prettied up to look a lot like Windows. It generally installs just fine, and is a little less resource hungry than Win10. Generally if your machine runs Win10 happily, it will work even better under Mint. Again you download the install file (iso) from dgdrls' link.  It will give you 3 options of different "desktops", that's basically just the front end desktop. I still run the older "Mate" version because that's what I'm used to.   Then you use the Rufus program in Windows to make a bootable USB drive. 

Now once you have that, there is one slightly tricky part. Your machine may not be set to boot off a USB drive, and you have to hit some function keys as soon as it comes on. May be F2, or Esc, or F12 or ? Google "boot disc selection" for your PC model, there will instructions. Once you get it to boot off the USB, it will load a "live" but fully functional version of Linux off the USB drive. Have a play with this as suggested. Make sure your actual PC is properly supported, network connection, sound etc are all working. It will run a bit sluggish off the USB as it's slower than your main drive.

If you are happy it's going to work, you click on the "Install" icon on the live desktop, and follow the prompts. Decision to make is then if you want to wipe the hard disk and just run Linux, OR make the machine dual boot. Basically that divides the disk up, and you can either load Linux or Windows each time you start the machine. Personally I just go all in and don't bother with dual boot, but the option is there. If you select dual boot the install will fluff around a bit re-arranging the disk to clear space, but that's OK. It also asks questions like what sore of Keyboard / Language / Timezone, and what  you want as a machine name / user name / and password. By default it asks for that password at boot, but you can also select "automatic login". You still need the password to install software and updates (that's just a security thing, makes it hard for malware to infect a the system)

Also you will be asked about "Multimedia Codecs", select yes. This is to play some video and sound files, and they are optional for licensing reasons. But you want them. 

Once the install has completed it will ask you to shut down, remove the USB dive, and restart. That's it. Mint will have installed Firefox as your web browser, Libre Office for documents / spreadsheets etc, and you have a basic functional computer. 

Other things to note, it defaults to locking the screen when the screensaver comes on. I disable that, it's under  "Preferences / Screensaver".To install more software, look under "Administration / Software Manager". I load Gimp photo editor, VLC media player, Spotify, Steam gaming etc. Chrome browser for Linux can be downloaded from Google, select the version for "Ubuntu Linux" (Mint is basically a customised version of Ubuntu)

Now that may seem a little daunting to read through, but you look at each step separately, and it's not rocket surgery. Modern versions of Linux are no more complex to install and use than Windows. I pointed out the only potentially tricky part, getting your PC to boot from USB, but you have to do that for a clean install of Windows too. Apart from that, it's just going through the steps, pointing and clicking etc. 

Another potential problem is if you NEED to use software that's only available for Windows (and there is no Linux version or similar). Most home users won't have this problem, but check that first. 

The idea of playing on an older spare PC is also good. If you do manage to mess up, you just reboot off the thumb drive and, wipe the hard disk clean, and try again. None of this can break the computer hardware, although you could potentially get into a broken operating system, requiring a format and start again to fix it.  

But you backed up all your files before you started right?

[Ron Wenrich]

I broke down and bought a reconditioned computer back in Feb.  I was running Win 8.  Win 11 was installed. 

But, I still have my old computer with nearly the same hardware.  Its not as fast, and doesn't have as much RAM or memory.  I was going to turn it in, but maybe I'll put Linux on that one.  My backup would be the new computer.

[mike dee]

I'm still running XP under VM in order to support legacy software needed to run legacy hardware.

The "upgrade train" is a BS cash grab. If they didn't put so much useless overhead cr@p in OS's these days they wouldn't need to install as many security patches.

Run a firewall at home? Windows 11? Great! Windows 11 now uses IPV6 and back doors your firewall so you can't stop malware phoning home anymore. How do you solve networking security problems? Easy! Just make everything on the network an "always internet connected server and router" so you can trust and rely on the AI and software/malware vendors to keep you secure.

The best locks in the world are useless when the criminals have the master keys to everything.

[dgdrls]

I'm still running XP under VM in order to support legacy software needed to run legacy hardware.

The "upgrade train" is a BS cash grab. If they didn't put so much useless overhead cr@p in OS's these days they wouldn't need to install as many security patches.

Run a firewall at home? Windows 11? Great! Windows 11 now uses IPV6 and back doors your firewall so you can't stop malware phoning home anymore. How do you solve networking security problems? Easy! Just make everything on the network an "always internet connected server and router" so you can trust and rely on the AI and software/malware vendors to keep you secure.

The best locks in the world are useless when the criminals have the master keys to everything.

Locks keep the honest people honest.

D

[Ianab]

The "upgrade train" is a BS cash grab.

This one basically is.

By giving free updates to Win10, it must have hurt PC / Windows sales, because the actual speed of PCs hasn't increased much lately, not as much as it did in earlier times. Sure processors have more compute cores now, better graphics processors, faster storage, but we don't have the orders of magnitude changes, like going from a 100 mhz CPU to 1,000 mhz. So my Windows "test machine" has a 2011 vintage CPU. It has an add-in graphics card and SSD drive now, so it runs Windows perfectly fine. There is no reason for me to toss it out and buy a new Win11 machine.

But that makes no $$ for MS if I keep running that. They also want me to pay yearly to use MS Office, because continuing to use the old (but still functional) version earns them no $$. I use Libre Office on it anyway, and will probably bodge Win11 onto a later model "E-Waste" box to replace it.

Now Linux also goes through upgrade / update cycles too, as new hardware and features are supported. But old hardware drops out of support when it becomes too slow to be usable for modern applications. Sometimes people make a hobby of getting things to run on ancient hardware, just to prove it can be done. But it's not usable hardware for everyday use.

So now "minimum spec" for Mint is something like a dual core 64 bit CPU, with 2 gb of RAM, just for the OS. That's basically a Core 2 Duo chip from 2006, nearly 20 years old. "Recommended" is a 4 core chip, with 4 gb of RAM, giving some capacity to actually run useful software. But Core 2 Quad chips (2007) fit the bill there. I've retired all my Core 2 era machines as I have better ones ( that were cheap, or free).

But to give an example, loading up the FF web page uses almost 1 gb of RAM, taking the amount used from 2 (basic linux) to 2.9 (Linux doing something useful). Open a few more apps and I'm at 3.5 gb. So you can see how you can run low on RAM easily with a few tabs and apps open if you are down at the low end.

If you really want low end, this is a Linux project that I was putzing with (must dig it out and complete it).
Laptop PSU for power (in place of solar panel).
12V battery
Raspberry Pi computer, 4 core / 4 gb ram etc
Mini monitor/ touch screen and folding bluetooth keyboard.
Some electrical spaghetti connecting it up.

[Plankton]

The desktop I run just for basic internet, word documents and spreadsheets along some mapping for forestry/logging related paperwork. I got used a few years ago for 100$ I think it has 8gigs ram and a 4 core processor. It had windows 7 on it when I got it and could barely load the home page. Put ubuntu on it within 20minutes of plugging it in and its lightning fast except when I have multiple mapping programs and documents up it lags a little on heavy images, a better graphics card and some more ram would help alot.

Computer is still going strong not sure the build date but its old for sure.

Libreoffice is free and better then microsoft products anyways I think. All around win win. Its what all my contracts documents and spreadsheets are made and used on.

[SwampDonkey]

I don't mind a new lap top every 10 years.    I use windows because that's what runs all my software. I have Office 2013 on this new PC I got last year, I just dug up my old install key. I don't use Office all that much to worry about, but it's there installed and useable. All my other software needs Windows. Weaving software, Maptitude GIS (not over bloated and difficult to use), ExpertGPS to use with my Garmin, Mapwel GPS map installer for my Garmin, fGIS (no longer updated since it went commercial, but I just use basic functions), Brave web browser (no Google back door), Movie Maker (yes you can still D/L it, better than Chimp they replaced it with), Photoshop (I've never used 1/4 of the features). I have a VM if I ever want to run XP, but I have no need for it. Some old software and hardware is well worth tossing.  Hey, but I still have working 40 year old 8-bit machines and a 30 year old 16 bit machine. The 40 year old stuff never needed an OS upgrade and the 16 bit machine you were better of not upgrading because of software compatibility and the millennium 2000 myth passed into silence. I wonder how many got sucked into that?   And my 5G cell phone has hotspot capability, so you could set up a router for the whole house if you wanted and cut $100/month service fee for just internet. Hmm, phone, internet and TV in my hands for the same money. :D

[Ianab]

And my 5G cell phone has hotspot capability, so you could set up a router for the whole house if you wanted and cut $100/month service fee for just internet.

If you have good wireless signal, that's actually an option. Looking at my ISP's page, they can hook me up with an unlimited data only cellular connection for about $50CA, maybe $60 if I need to buy a new modem over 12 months. Currently that's limited to 64 mb speed, but that's perfectly "fine".

We do pay about $100CA for internet, but for that we get unlimted 900 mb connection, and Netflix included. So we limit our cell plans, and use the house wifi 90% of the time.

The larger Telcos can supply basic broadband via cellular cheap because they already own the cell towers, no line charges. Our fibre connection isn't owned by our ISP, it's owned by the Govt lines company, and they rent the fibre out to whichever ISP we want to use. Allows competition between the ISPs, but that all have to pay that fixed line charge. 

[Ianab]

I got used a few years ago for 100$ I think it has 8gigs ram and a 4 core processor.

Early model i5 probably? Plenty good for regular use with Linux.  

Not sure if you have a SSD drive, but those really perk up old machines, even if you only load the system on the SSD, and keep your files on the larger / slower HDD. Larger SSDs are of course cheap now, but if you paid $100 for the computer, should you spend another $100 on a new disk for it?   A $20 disk for the Linux system will give a huge boost. 

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, all I would need here is a sim card for the wireless router that the phone would access. I can actually get one from Bell for $5, I don't need one in the phone, it uses eSIM.

I have 5G signal here and clear view of the tower on the mountain. 4 - 5 bars of signal. It's actually a lot faster than my current ISP. Speed varies from 70-120 Mbps, depends on where I set the phone. I have a 250 gig plan at 5G and unlimited at reduced speed and no roaming charges. I won't use up the 250 for all I do. I'm going to leave the old ISP active so mother has SamsungTV and Youtube, runs videos fine off those on LT. If I were alone I would just have this mobile service and cancel both land line and reg ISP. I was thinking of getting Starlink, but I don't need it here and costs $40 more for internet, which is a lot faster. But you're on your own for service to. 

[SwampDonkey]

I like those SSD's I have 2 externals, one is 1TB and the other is 4TB, I put DVD's onto them and put on my household server to watch, saves swapping CD's.    The laptop has one inside and the Xbox uses one as well. They are zippy fast drives for sure. 

That being said, I have used physical HD's for years and never had one ever fail. Some people claim they have troubles, I guess I must be real lucky. I always had the top brands of the day. HD were expensive 30 years ago, for even a 50 MB drive.   I wonder if this digital stuff will last as long as say a movie on actual film. I have my doubts. There is some stuff now on film over 100 years old. I doubt CD's will last 100 years. 

[SwampDonkey]

Here's all it took to connect a router with the mobile phone, just a USB connection, which is nice because it also charges the phone.  The cable is USB-C for the phone end and regular older USB-2 connector to the router.  I used it when on FibreOP in Grafton. Never throw noth'n away. 5G connection throughout the house now. Cancelled old ISP today, saving $108 a month. I actually have unlimited data on my plan, but 275 Gig at 5G. Love it. Don't need any hardware on the house.