Most of them are just using their PCs as browser platforms and don't notice any big change other than stuff just runs a lot faster.

The Windows 10 extension is a nefarious scheme to keep people from finding other platforms. It also ties the Windows users much more tightly into the MS cloudy system.

And it's not "California is so furious...". Just one gentleman (I presume) who could be labeled a 'Californian'.

Good luck.

We're all watching.

*Cough* Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC *Cough* About $15 *Cough*

*Cough* Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC *Cough* https://massgrave.dev/ *Cough*

*Cough* Windows Server 2022 with Desktop Experience *Cough* About $35 on CDKeys or GVGMall *Cough*

*Cough* Download the ISO directly from Microsoft *Cough* Supported until early 2033 *Cough*

*Cough* Will pass any Certification *Cough* Regulatory *Cough* or (Cyber)Insurance *Cough* requirement an organization or Independent proffesionals may have/need *Cough*

This at least gets Microsoft to notice, and some press coverage, even though the likelihood of getting very far in court is nil. MS might change something in favor of Windows 10 users... or not. Welcome to the US, the court system will be happy to take your money and tell you to go away.

They don't tell you to go away... it's usually who can afford lawyers the longest.

That's why it's so "scandalous" that Peter Thiel bankrolled Hulk Hogan against Gawker, and Elon Musk bankrolled Gina Carano against Disney.

Edit: not originally a big fan of Peter Thiel, but putting Gawker out of business was awesome.

If Microsoft was taking part in competition for the shittiest company, they'd easily get the brown medal.

but still holds the ?candle? to the darker shade called orcale...

Pooracle?

I upgraded my desktop, which doesn't have TPM 2.0 or a supported processor, using some unapproved "hacks". This was not difficult, didn't require any geeky coding, just downloading a couple of tools to create appropriate installation media on a USB drive that would bypass the various requirements.

So much as I think suing Microsoft is a bit over the top, they really could give people with unsupported hardware a much easier way to keep those machines running that would almost certainly work for most of them. Dumping Win 10 users into either paying for support, or going without security updates, is a stupid idea. And I suspect it will come back to bite Microsoft.

I installed W11 on my "new"* PC about 2 years ago, no TPM 2.0, usual Rufus workarounds, so far so hoopy.

Now the desktop PC motherboard has a plug in option for a TPM 2.0 module which for about $C23 & as a spur of the moment I decided last week lets go for it.

Motherboard & Windows 11 detected it without issues & allowed a seamless update to W11 24H2.

I don't know if it's the update or the sudden additional resource or both but my i9 PC (Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-9900 CPU @ 3.10GHz, 128 GB, 2Tb NVMe SSDs mounted on the motherboard) suddenly became a lot more responsive.

I realise this isn't going to be the case for everyone, but I've managed to install W11 on a range of personal devices including a HP T510 (Thin Client) using the various workarounds.

* E-waste rescue!

I know, I know - I'll say three Hail Marys and a Systemd

Microsoft keeping Win10 alive means them paying workers to 'fix' an OS that they sold you 10 years ago.

Is this the same as a car company still making spare parts for a 10 year old car? Or is it the same as insisting that the dealer gives you free upgrades to meet new safety or emission standards ?

Are the "security fixes" fixing flaws in the original product or are they adapting to newly invented threats ?

Most of the things are flaws in the original program. That nobody found them until now does not matter. And this holds for any software. What are most flaws? Stack overflows, memory leaks, out of bounds writing, SQL inserts, directory traversals - and that's just the things I remember from the last two weeks, I'd say. You know, things we have been worrying about for a long time.

And Win10 has been released to the public in 2017. That's only eight years ago :) (c'mon, let me nitpick)

>And Win10 has been released to the public in 2017

It feels much longer. Perhaps the 7->10 transition was so seamless they blurred in my ever fading memory...

It was actually 2015; just over 10 years to the day ago.

And if you've blanked out the whole "gwx.exe" nightmare, with Microsoft using dark patterns and "are you sure you don't not want to not decline the opportunity to accept this upgrade, oh you clicked the X button, that must mean YES PLEASE INSTALL 10" shenanigans, then you're not alone.

Yes Microsoft are evil, I remember back in the 2000s when they told customers of our Linux app that they would be sued because "Linux was stolen"

But is there a reasonable limit to how long you have to support an OS? We used to pay a fortune in maintenance contracts for VMS. Should I expect HP to now provide free security patches?

Dunno why you downvoted me (if it was you?) because in my comment I didn't express an opinion one way or the other on whether MS should continue to support Windows 10.

Although for what it's worth,

a) I don't think it's reasonable for them to continue to support it after 10 years; operating systems aren't cars or washing machines or houses (the usual consumer goods offered as comparison for warranty purposes), for the principle reason that what you use a PC for changes over its lifetime, from word-processing to gaming to virtual reality to generative AI, and so the hardware must change and evolve too. Whereas a washing machine, say... well, on the first day you use it, you put clothes in and expect them to come out clean, and 10 years later, you're still putting very similar clothes in and expecting the same outcome. Washing machines don't have to evolve to handle, say, 5-dimensional virtual hypertrousers, or underpants that explode if rotated, or clothes that take the form of a 9x4x1 black monolith.

b) But equally, the hardware requirements for Windows 11 do seem to be artificially high for no other reason than to say "fuck you, we can't be bothered supporting older stuff any more". I will never again take any of Microsoft's environmental sanctimony even vaguely seriously. "Windows Update will schedule updates for when your local electricity is carbon-neutral"... yeah, right, after the mountains of e-waste that their actions have created, that's the green-washing equivalent of "no whipped cream on my jumbo extra-thick lard milkshake please, I want to be healthy".

> Microsoft keeping Win10 alive means them paying workers to 'fix' an OS that they sold you 10 years ago.

No, it doesn't... Win11 didn't come out until 2021, which is not 10 years ago. You could still have bought Win10 in 2022, which by my calculations is only 3 years ago.

I enabled Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 on my Windows 10 Virtualbox VM, and M$ instantly attempted to install Windows 11.

Without asking if that's what I wanted. Of course...

Considering that Microsoft said that Windows 10 was the last version of Windows (https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows), I can kind of see his point.

Given the historical monopolostic practices of ms and the pc industry, i can see his point.

Although I'm sure his lawyers won't tell him that.

That is the last version which uses the same core as Win10 (1809). Updates until 2029. Or run Server 2022, still the same UI, but robocopy /iorate and smb-compression and nested-V for AMD. I run the latter on a few low end devices, 'cause it does not need much space, not much RAM, even as non-core install, directx/directdraw are easily installed, done. Less resource hungry than Windows 10 let alone Windows 11.

What is this 'forced upgrade'? Does MS take control of your system and upgrade it?

Just keep your third party anti-virus up to date. There really is no financial incentive in hacking random individual users. And W10 becoming unsupported will protect you from Windows upgrade fails, which are far more likely than you being targeted by a hacker.

I only use Windows about 0.1% of the time, Linux is the only thing installed on my desktop but my laptop can dual boot. That way if I run into something that requires Windows (one of those used to be PDF fill in forms but once Firefox started being able to do that that was one less use for Windows) I can run it.

Since I use it so rarely, and don't leave it running, I really don't think it will make any difference at all whether it is kept up to date on security patches. Indeed, I'm looking forward to the cessation of security fixes as I won't have the annoying waiting period when I boot into Windows before I can actually use it where it runs at a crawl with the fan going crazy because it is downloading and installing updates!

Even if it gets hacked I'll just restore the image from a backup. I don't permanently keep any files on it I care about so that's a simple solution.