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?