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Are you prepared for the ramifications of windows 10 EoL?

Next year Windows 10 goes End of Life. Microsoft will undoubtedly push windows 11 hard, but a lot of machines won’t support it leading to a few economic points of interest:

The demand for new machines will be high, driving up cost.

The supply of unsupported machines will be high, driving down the used market.

Are you all ready?

treeofnik ,
@treeofnik@discuss.online avatar

Recently switched to Mac for work and all my home stuff is Linux. Let the rain fall

nafzib ,

With Valve pumping all that development money and effort into proton, I will finally be able to go full Linux before Windows 10 ends it's life. I only needed it for gaming, but those days are finally gone! Thanks Valve! ^_^

Brkdncr OP ,

This is the year of Linux on desktop?

A_Random_Idiot ,
@A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world avatar

every year is the year of linux on desktop, or so has been claimed.

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

My Grandma uses Arch by the way

AdamBomb ,

I did that this year, smooth sailing so far!

A_Random_Idiot ,
@A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world avatar

I did it many years ago. Some minor hiccups (Mostly at the start, with a select few games taking a while before running well in proton), but overall my experience has been pretty smooth as well. Especially in like the last..3ish years? I dont think I've been held back from playing anything I seriously wanted to play.

HubertManne ,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

nope

Paragone ,

iirc, Microsoft had some significant investment in Intel.

this is perfectly rational monopolist-cartel-protecting-monopolist-cartel behavior.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=microsoft%27s+investment+in+intel&t=fpas&ia=web

20hzservers ,

My job in the a non technical field relies on a laptop to run a label printer, the laptop is ancient and I already had to install revOS on it so that printing labels isn't horribly bogged down waiting on the laptop to load the simple printer program. Is there anyway that proton would be able to run that program? Probably not because of all lack of driver support, if anyone has any ideas I'm all ear, even just pointing me in a direction would be appreciated!

tal , (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

Proton is really a WINE fork intended specifically for Steam games. Most of the changes in it target games. You may hear a lot about Proton having good compatibility because, historically, games were where WINE tended to have compatibility issues, and Valve put a lot of work into fixing that, so it's more that Proton just improved the situation a lot recently.

WINE might be able to run the program, would be what I'd try rather than Proton. You can technically run Proton without Steam, but it's not really designed for that.

Or you might be able to run a Windows VM on newer hardware and run it on that, would be my fallback attempt. Less seamless than just having a Windows program open a window alongside Linux ones, but sometimes that can work if WINE can't do it.

I'd see if Linux can recognize the label printer, if this is a really ancient printer. That'd be my first step. Then look into having Windows apps print to said printer.

20hzservers ,

Shit lol, I meant wine, I personally use proton for steam so it's stuck in my brain first. Also it's not so much that it's ancient but that it's a commercial printer not really marketeted to the public, but I'll give running the computer on Linux a shot with wine maybe a Linux miracle will happen.

Agility0971 ,
@Agility0971@lemmy.world avatar

This sounds interesting. What the hell is RevOS? What kind of label maker is that? Does it have a name? Do you know what kind of cable it's using to communicate with the pc?

20hzservers ,

Yeah it's brand name is kiaro it just uses a usb to connect to the laptop, and revOS is basically just a custom windows install that has as much of the bloatware removed as possible as well as some UI mods to make it feel more like old school windows a little bit. The laptop is from like pre 2010 so Microsoft is slowly killing it's performance with all the bloatware crap. Kinda ridiculous that they don't take older hardware performance very seriously on windows the thing is just trying to run simple GUI printer software and it was struggling hard before revOS.

Agility0971 ,
@Agility0971@lemmy.world avatar

This is what I think one need to do to test if that would work

  • get latest ubuntu live cd
  • install bottles
  • run label printer installer for windows in bottles
  • check if the program runs at all

If the device is a COM device in windows then I think it should just work out of the box. If not, then the entire device needs to be forwarded using udev rules to wine. Let me know if you want to attempt this :)

Felipe ,

Just using 10 LTSC which has updates until 2032 iirc. I would switch to Linux but my simracing hardware doesn't play nice.

secret300 ,

I thought that was only the IoT version that had support til 2032

tal , (edited )
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

simracing hardware

Hmm. Like, pedals, throttle, steering wheel? That was an issue many years back, but most of that supports USB HID these days. Like, OSes don't normally need hardware-specific drivers or anything.

f__ ,

Unfortunately, that's really not true for most sim racing hardware. Lower-end Logitech and Thrustmaster stuff usually works fine, but you're pretty much screwed once you go beyond that.

Felipe ,

Wheel and pedal's work fine but headtracking seems to be a no go with my ghetto setup, Assetto Corsa (with Content Manager) is also a huge PIA to setup.

SapphironZA ,

We are trialing about 20 Linux desktops (10 Linux mint and 10 zorin OS) across 2 of our MSP clients.

So far, they have had zero technical tickets in 6 months. They did have double the average user training tickets compared to windows machines. Most of the questions were around how to work with editable PDFs and where is the document was they just saved (file manager questions).

Zorin OS seems to be winning on the usability metrics. Its very polished and more closely matching the UI of people coming from windows.

DeprecatedCompatV2 ,

Are there any windows programs you've had to set up through wine?

SapphironZA ,

Not in our case. We only take on clients that converted to browser based apps. Bit we are yet to convert the heavy excel users. The one we have converted are light Excel users and online excel is working just fine for them.

vivavideri ,

It's my only hangup. I vba on the regular. Work forced win11 on me, but at home, once i can be assed, I'll vm windows eventually and migrate completely, and scheme alternative languages for my spreadsheet wizardry lmao

Wooki ,

Libre calc Scripting imo is more matured and better than excel. Better and far more popular language (python or javascript equally far better than vb)

vivavideri ,

I've heard good things but haven't looked into it yet. Thing is, I got so good at vba that I got a promotion out of it lmao. As archaic as it is, my work is essentially hardcoded in windows for the foreseeable future, so I have to be able to dick around in msoffice.

Wooki ,

I highly recommend skilling up asap. Its really eol. Nothing stopping you from changing your code to python (which is supported in excel) with the goal to migrate out to either an application or FOSS office suite. LibreOffice costs your corpo IT nothing to deploy unlike MS Office which costs to buy and keeps costing with every proprietary service and feature you use.

Agility0971 ,
@Agility0971@lemmy.world avatar

If you want yet another promotion you know what to do next

Contramuffin ,

I've switched to W11 on my main rig, since Linux doesn't have the sort of compatibility that I can rely on for my work. I installed explorer patcher to restore W10 start menu, task bar, and right click menu. I combed through the settings to deactivate all the data collection settings.

On my laptop, I dual boot W11 and KDE Neon.

It's the best that I can do given the circumstances

regdog ,

I already use Windows Update Blocker to disable automatic updates of Windows. So Windows 10 going EOL won't change much for me.

Brkdncr OP ,

Why would you be blocking updates? Win10 is basically getting security fixes only at this point.

regdog ,

It is also getting increasingly annoying nagging screens for Windows 11

Strayce ,

Not really, but I have 18 months to migrate all my shit away from there. I've already moved a lot of my critical stuff to FOSS software running under win10 and I'm more than passing familiar with Linux. Shouldn't be a massive deal.

TimeSquirrel , (edited )
@TimeSquirrel@kbin.social avatar

Already got my NEW 12-core machine before prices go up, running Debian 100%. With my 25 year history of using Linux and pirating Windows, MS never saw a damn penny from me, and I'm proud of that fact. Not even an OEM license (all my laptops I ever had were work supplied and I build my own PCs)

Firipu ,
@Firipu@startrek.website avatar

To be fair, I've been using windows since 3.1. I haven't paid for windows since xp I think. I got an oem key second hand right around w7 for my desktop. That key has just lasted me all the way to w11. So I haven't paid ms anything either in decades (except for my personal data I guess?)

dual_sport_dork ,
@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

I've never paid for a Windows license, ever. I sure as fuck didn't for Win 95 when it came out, since us script kiddies figured out pretty fast you can install it with a CD key of all 1's. And then I used Windows 2000 for a long time. So long that I still remember the (stolen, MSDN) license key I used from having installed it umpteen times.

DDTPV-TXMX7-BBGJ9-WGY8K-B9GHM

There, you can have that one gratis and for nothin'. For all the good it'll do you now.

And I still have one of those grey and blue plastic MSDN tackle boxes full of CD's of all the Microsoft stuff. You want a copy of Visual Studio 2003 or something? I got you.

derpgon ,

I've extracted about 40 keys from my school, all W10, Education edition (equal to Enterprise), but work with any newer edition. Unlimited number of uses, no expiration. I've been sharing them left and right, and if one goes bad, I just let them switch to a new one.

Brkdncr OP ,

MAK isn’t unlimited number of uses.

derpgon ,

Well, then I didn't hit the limit yet lol.

Brkdncr OP ,

Yeah I recently purchased a new laptop to replace the one I’ve had for 12 years. Hoping to get another 12 years out of it and I didn’t want to fight the enterprise customers.

Viking_Hippie ,

I'm seriously considering making Tiny11 my daily driver on my gaming desktop.

I'm about to start a prolonged test run on my new to me secondhand laptop as soon as my ADHD brain lets me remember at an opportune time to actually do it 😄

victorz ,

Do you have a to-do list somewhere, analog or digital? Definitely helps me remember all the shit I need to remember.

I pick something every day to do off of it. Probably add more than 7 things during the week though. 🫣

Viking_Hippie ,

Keeping lists has not really worked for me to the point that I'm actively averse to them, especially in paper form.

In stead I make do with alarms and making sure that my days are hardly ever busy so that I and my very basic system don't get overwhelmed lol

aStonedSanta ,

Same here. I have to set an alert/notification. I like to set it three times 5 mins apart. Usually works. Lol

Viking_Hippie ,

I usually set one 24h before the thing, one 1h before I have to leave for the thing, and sometimes an extra one 2h before lol

aStonedSanta ,

Haha glad we have both found something that works for us. I might steal that 24hr one. Could spur me to just do it then you miss all the shots you don’t take or whatever eh? 🙏

Viking_Hippie ,

Oh shit, I forgot to mention the most important one: the "just in time to slowly get ready and still have a couple of minutes to stand at the bus stop wondering if the damn thing is EVER coming" alarm 😄

Fake4000 ,

Honestly, once a Microsoft is goes end of life, it becomes a great offline machine to run older software and games.

Guaranteed not to be pissed around with Microsoft updates.

Crafter72 ,
@Crafter72@lemmy.world avatar

The only thing that hold me back full-time linux daily driving due to workplace uses M$ suites (Office, Teams, Outlook and so on) and CAD program (Freecad pita for me, haven't tried Ondsel addon).

I don't think they would just abandon the support overnight (unless they're being greedy af and want to drive the failed "Windows 11" adoption very fast). The fact that they only make "sudo" utility only for Windows 11 is disguting (though you can do it yourself on windows 10 too), pretty sure they will keep giving security patches just like XP and 7 being legacy system.

Brkdncr OP ,

They dropped support for Exchange server even though the following months a vuln came out. I suspect people are going to be seeing a lot of notices from Microsoft.

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Yes I am.

I hope for the cheap unsupported to-be-Linux machines.

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